Simple Ways to Freshen Up Your Home
Simple Ways to Freshen Up Your Home
It’s understandable that you want to freshen up your home, especially during transition periods and seasonal changes. But it can seem overwhelming – do you need to repaint the room? Replace all the furniture? You don’t have to do anything quite that drastic. Easy, simple ways to freshen up your home make more sense. Here are a few proven and easy ways to freshen up your home.
Removing and organizing clutter is probably the number one thing you can do to freshen up your home. After a while it’s normal to stop “seeing” the clutter. Put a fresh pair of eyes on, so to speak, and go through the rooms and remove anything that doesn’t fit the theme or function. Kids’ toys, paper piles, forgotten coffee mugs, and so forth can all be gathered up and put back in their rightful place. If they do not have a rightful place, either get rid of them or make a rightful place.
One way to create neat, uncluttered storage is to use decorative boxes. Put the items in there – items like remote controls, electronics, cell phones, and so forth – and slip the decorative box into a bookshelf or place it on the mantel so it looks nice, and no one needs to know it holds clutter!
Adding a shelf can open up a huge range of organizational opportunities. The trendiest way to do this is with floating shelves. These require specialized brackets which are made by several manufacturers such as Tech Team https://techteamproducts.com/ who makes 3 sizes. Their item # 729 which is 32” long https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Team-Floating-Bracket-Heavy-Duty/dp/B07G1GT662/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1544212238&sr=8-26&keywords=tech+team, item 730 which is 18” long https://www.amazon.com/TECH-TEAM-Floating-Bracket-Construction/dp/B07G1KJ6S6/ref=sr_1_5?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1539526505&sr=8-5&keywords=tech+team+floating , and their item 731 which is 6” long (link). All of them are high quality and super strong.
Add some green and vibrant plants. Trailing green vines like ivy or golden pothos are a great place to start, and they add a lovely green and natural air to the room. In addition, these plants really do help clean the air, so they freshen your home in a very literal way. Here are some air-freshening varieties you can try:
* Aloe vera
* Spider plant
* Gerber daisies
* Golden pothos
* Snake plant
* Schefflera
* Ficus (fig), especially weeping fig
* English ivy
* Dracaenas
* Bamboo palm
Make a new arrangement – put the table under the window; move the couch so it’s caddy-corner; put a tall lamp behind a corner chair. Rearranging furniture will give your home a fresh new look, as will rearranging knick-knacks and decorative objects. Of course, all this rearranging won’t have a freshening effect if you don’t clean and wash the items and furniture. So make sure you clean and dust as you go. To wash furniture, you can make your own cleaner with 1 tablespoon liquid dish soap and 2 cups of hot water. Whip with an egg-white attachment on your electric mixer, and you will get a dense foam you can use to sponge off your furniture. Then go over it again with a sponge and clear, warm water.
Washing the walls is simple, and much cheaper and quicker than painting. With a bucket of warm, soapy water and a sponge, you can go over your walls to clean them. Add a few drops of fresh-scented essential oil, like lemon, orange, or lavender to the soapy water. You will be amazed at how dirty the water gets, especially if you have a fireplace or worse yet a smoker in the house. Once you’ve done that, go back over walls with clean, warm water. Your whole room will look brighter and smell cleaner!
Area rugs and throw rugs can be changed out or put away for the spring and summer. You can also simply wash them and put them back, freshening up the room considerably. You also might want to consider getting new area or throw rugs, as long as you can find one within your budget. Even a new, colorful welcome mat in the entryway, a relatively inexpensive purchase, can freshen up the look of a room.
There are all kinds of ways to freshen up your home! These are just five of them. Get creative and enjoy giving your home a “facelift”!
